All were murderers.

Many had been hanged, before the laws of England had so changed that men and women were no longer hanged by the neck until they were dead, but sentenced, on conviction of murder, to ‘life’ imprisonment. Rollison kept an open mind on the subject of capital punishment but did not think that ‘life’ should prove, as it so often did, no more than nine or ten years in prison. Yet there were murderers whom he would have let off scot-free had he been judge and jury.

But none such as those he had been hunting until they had died or had been caught and tried, and later represented on this wall. For these trophies were of deadly killers; mostly evil men. The small tube of poisons reminded him of the hideous doctor who gave prostitutes a drug to make them scream and writhe — and while they were in contortions of agony the doctor possessed them. The top hat had two bullet holes; the second had knocked the hat off his head, some nine years ago. The lipstick had contained potassium cyanide, so that the user, breaking a thin coating protecting the lethal dose, had daubed her lips and died. Even the nylon stocking, looking solitary and strangely seductive draped over a skeletal foot, had been used to strangle a woman.

These things Rollison remembered as he waited.

He saw his man, Jolly, appear at the door leading from the kitchen, and sadly shook his head; Jolly by now, would have bacon and eggs all ready for the pan and would be exasperated by this delay.

Suddenly, a man said: “Mr. Rollison?” in an unmistakable American voice.

“Yes,” Rollison said, almost startled.

“Mr. Rollison, I’m sorry to bother you at this time, but my name is Selly, Jim Selly, of the New York Times. You might even remember me.”